Canada Port Statistics 2026 | Volume, Growth & Key Trade Infrastructure Data

What Do Canada’s Port Tell Us in 2026?

Canada’s port network in 2026 is operating at the intersection of record-breaking performance and historic strategic realignment. The headline number that defines the year is 170.4 million tonnes of cargo through the Port of Vancouver in 2025 — an 8% year-on-year increase and an all-time record for Canada’s largest port — driven by a deliberate and accelerating pivot away from dependence on US trade routes toward overseas markets in the Indo-Pacific, Middle East, and Europe. That pivot is not coincidental. It is the direct and documented response of Canadian exporters and port operators to US protectionist trade policies under the Trump administration, which have pushed Canadian shippers of grain, crude oil, potash, and manufactured goods to urgently deepen commercial relationships with markets that can absorb Canadian exports without the tariff and regulatory volatility now characterising the US economic relationship. The Port of Vancouver’s own March 2026 press release explicitly frames the record as a product of “shippers seeking to grow overseas markets far from an increasingly protectionist United States.”

The breadth and depth of Canada’s 2026 port infrastructure story extends well beyond Vancouver’s record annual throughput. The Port of Prince Rupert — Canada’s second major Pacific gateway — posted 26.3 million tonnes of cargo in 2025, a 14% increase over 2024, with container traffic surging 20% to nearly 886,000 TEUs as shippers capitalised on the port’s unique geographic advantage: it sits one to two sailing days closer to Asia than any other major North American West Coast port, saving up to 60 hours of transit time on the critically important transpacific lanes. More than C$3 billion in capital investment is actively under construction or recently completed across Prince Rupert’s terminals alone, with CANXPORT, the South Kaien Logistics Park, the CN Zanardi Rapids Bridge Expansion, and the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility all scheduled to deliver significant new capacity through 2026 and 2027. Simultaneously, Halifax on the East Coast is processing record cruise passenger volumes and automotive throughput, while Montreal maintains its role as the dominant Atlantic gateway for European trade. Understanding the full scope of Canada’s port statistics in 2026 is essential for anyone tracking the country’s trade diversification strategy, infrastructure investment trajectory, and economic resilience in a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment.

Interesting Facts About Canada Port Statistics in 2026

Source: Vancouver Fraser Port Authority media release (March 9, 2026); CBC News (March 10, 2026); Prince Rupert Port Authority press release (January 14, 2026); Globe Newswire / DP World (April 16, 2026); AJOT.com (March 23, 2026); CFNR Network (January 14, 2026); FreightAmigo Largest Ports in Canada Guide (April 24, 2026); Association of Canadian Port Authorities (ACPA) data

The 15 headline facts above capture a Canadian port network in 2026 that is simultaneously breaking records, reconfiguring supply chains, and accelerating an infrastructure investment cycle of a scale and urgency rarely seen in this sector. The Port of Vancouver’s 8% year-on-year volume increase to 170.4 million tonnes is not the product of a single commodity surge but a broad-based record across grain, crude oil, potash, containers, and automobiles — all four of these categories reaching record levels in the same year. This breadth matters because it reflects a genuine structural diversification of Canada’s export base rather than a one-off commodity price effect, and it was driven specifically by the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline’s first full year of operation in 2025, which allowed crude oil exports from Vancouver to nearly double as new pipeline capacity finally connected Alberta’s oil sands production directly to a Pacific tidewater terminal capable of loading VLCC-class vessels bound for China and South Korea.

The geopolitical context that the Port of Vancouver’s own official press release foregrounds — “overseas markets far from an increasingly protectionist United States” — is one of the most openly stated strategic reframings of a Canadian infrastructure organization’s mission in recent memory. For decades, the dominant narrative of Canadian port investment was gateway efficiency in service of the continental trade relationship with the United States. In 2026, that narrative has materially shifted: record volumes of Canadian grain going to the Middle East, record crude oil going to Northeast Asia, record potash flowing to multiple overseas markets — all of these data points describe a conscious and commercially significant reorientation of Canada’s port network from a primarily bilateral trade corridor with the US toward a genuinely diversified global export platform. The C$1.9 trillion international trade economy that Canada’s ports now underpin gives that reorientation enormous economic stakes.

Canada’s Major Ports — Performance Data in 2026 | Port-by-Port Breakdown

Canada's Major Ports — 2025 Cargo Volume Performance
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Port of Vancouver          ████████████████████████████████████████  170.4 MMT (+8% YoY) — all-time record
Port of Prince Rupert      ████████                                   26.3 MMT (+14% YoY) — record
Port of Montreal           ████                                       ~35.3 MMT (2023 baseline)
Port of Halifax            ██                                         Significant; cruise + auto hub
Port of Quebec City        ██                                         Bulk commodities, aluminium
Port of Saint John, NB     ██                                         Oil refinery product focus
Seven Ports combined       ████████████████████████████████████████  ~350+ MMT via ACPA network
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Scale: Each █ ≈ approx. 4.5 MMT (million metric tonnes)

Source: Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (March 9, 2026); Prince Rupert Port Authority (January 14, 2026); AJOT (March 2026); Beacon.com Seven Busiest Canadian Cargo Ports; FreightAmigo Major Canadian Ports (2026); Port of Montreal Statistics

The port-by-port performance data makes clear that Canada’s maritime trade infrastructure in 2026 is a tale of two coasts with very different stories. On the Pacific Coast, both Vancouver and Prince Rupert are posting record or near-record volumes, driven primarily by Asia-Pacific trade demand and Canada’s booming export of energy and agricultural commodities. The combined Pacific Coast throughput of over 196 million tonnes from these two ports alone dwarfs anything seen on the Atlantic side, reflecting the gravitational pull of Asia as the world’s dominant consumer of the specific commodities that Canada produces in bulk — metallurgical coal for steel-making, grain for food security, potash for fertilizers, crude oil for energy, and LPG for industrial use. The Trans Mountain Expansion’s first full year of operation in 2025 is arguably the single most consequential infrastructure event in Canadian port history in decades, having effectively unlocked a new tidewater terminal for Pacific oil exports that did not practically exist at scale before late 2024.

Montreal’s position as Canada’s largest East Coast port reflects a trade geography that is structurally distinct from the Pacific gateways: where Vancouver and Prince Rupert serve bulk commodity exporters moving Canadian resources to Asian manufacturing economies, Montreal primarily serves consumer goods importers bringing containerised European and Mediterranean products into the North American interior. Its location on the St. Lawrence — making it the largest inland port in Canada by land distance from the ocean — gives it unique access to the Canadian heartland’s population centers and manufacturing base, but also makes it more exposed to Great Lakes navigation seasonality and ice conditions that the ice-free ports of Halifax and the Pacific coast do not face. Halifax’s growing role in automotive throughput and cruise traffic fills a distinct niche on the East Coast, offering carriers a resilient alternative routing for US Northeast trade that has gained additional strategic relevance in 2026 as cross-border trade diversification has become a national economic policy priority.

Port of Vancouver Infrastructure Investments in 2026 | Capacity Expansion Data

Port of Vancouver — 2025–2026 Key Infrastructure Projects
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2)     ████████████████████████████████████████  +2.4M TEU capacity; early 2030s
GCT Deltaport Megamax cranes        █████████████████████████████████████     $170M; 6 new cranes total
Westshore Potash Terminal upgrade   █████████████████████████████████████     4.5 MMT potash capacity target
DP World short-sea shipping hub     ████████████████████████████████████      Summer 2026 launch
Centerm Expansion (completed)       ████████████████████████████████████████  1.5M TEU capacity (was 900K)
Active Vessel Traffic Management    ████████████████████████████████████████  Port-wide; completed late 2025
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Scale: Each █ ≈ relative investment magnitude

Source: Vancouver Fraser Port Authority media release (March 9, 2026); AJOT (September 2024); CBC News (March 2026); FreightAmigo Largest Ports in Canada (April 2026)

The Vancouver infrastructure investment picture in 2026 presents a port authority operating simultaneously on two distinct time horizons: near-term projects designed to capture the 2025–2027 demand surge driven by trade diversion from the US, and longer-term capacity expansion — epitomised by the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project — designed to position Canada’s Pacific gateway competitively through the 2030s and 2040s as Indo-Pacific trade corridors continue to grow in importance. The GCT Deltaport Megamax crane programme sits at the intersection of these time horizons: the two cranes installed in 2025 already represent a meaningful upgrade in the port’s ability to handle the ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs) that the major global shipping alliances are deploying more aggressively on Pacific routes, while the completion of all six cranes will ensure that Vancouver remains competitive for ULCV calls throughout the decade.

The Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project deserves particular attention as the single largest infrastructure investment decision on the horizon for Canadian ports. At close to C$2 billion and adding 2.4 million TEUs of capacity — approximately 30% of Canada’s current entire West Coast container capacity — RBT2 represents a generational bet on the continued expansion of transpacific container trade and Canada’s role within it. The project’s long and contested regulatory history — it has been in various stages of planning, environmental review, and political consideration for over a decade — reflects both the genuine complexity of major marine terminal development and the competing community, environmental, and economic interests that large port projects inevitably engage. Now that environmental approvals are in place, the early 2030s operations target represents the end of that long journey — and the beginning of a significant expansion of Canada’s container trade capacity precisely as the US trade relationship continues its strategic reconfiguration.

Port of Prince Rupert Infrastructure Pipeline in 2026 | C$3B+ Investment Programme

Prince Rupert Port — Capital Investment Pipeline (2025–2027+)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ridley Island Energy Export Facility  ████████████████████████████████████████  C$1.46B — LPG + bulk liquids
DP World ongoing capex (3-year plan)   █████████████████████████████████████     C$100M+ planned 2026–2028
CANXPORT (108-acre transload hub)      ████████████████████████████████████████  400K TEU annual export capacity
South Kaien Logistics Park             ████████████████████████                  C$60.7M (CIB loan to Metlakatla)
CN Zanardi Rapids Bridge Expansion     ████████████████████████████████████████  1,600-ft two-track bridge; 2027
Trigon Pacific Berth 2 (Beyond Carbon) ████████████████████████████████████      Marine infrastructure; 2026
Total active investment portfolio      ████████████████████████████████████████  C$3 billion+
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Scale: Each █ ≈ relative investment magnitude

Source: Prince Rupert Port Authority (January 14, 2026); CFNR Network (January 14, 2026); Globe Newswire / DP World (April 16, 2026); AJOT (March 23, 2026); Canada Infrastructure Bank (2025)

Prince Rupert’s C$3 billion-plus capital investment pipeline active in 2026 is not simply a set of infrastructure projects — it is the physical embodiment of a strategic shift in how Canada’s resource export economy is being wired to the world. The centrepiece of that shift is the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility (REEF): at C$1.46 billion, it is the largest single capital investment in the Port of Prince Rupert’s history, and it will fundamentally transform the port’s ability to export liquefied petroleum gases and bulk liquids to Asian markets at scale. AltaGas has already demonstrated the commercial logic of this approach — its existing propane terminal exported 2.4 million tonnes of LPG to Asian markets in 2025, a 6% year-on-year increase — and REEF’s completion will multiply that capacity significantly, giving Canadian energy producers a Pacific tidewater option for LPG and bulk liquids that they have not had before. The Canada Infrastructure Bank’s decision to provide its first-ever loan to a Canadian port — the C$60.7 million for the South Kaien Logistics Park — signals federal recognition that Prince Rupert’s investment pipeline has graduated from speculative expansion to nationally strategic infrastructure.

The CN Zanardi Rapids Bridge Expansion represents the often-overlooked but absolutely critical rail dimension of Prince Rupert’s port growth strategy. Every container, tonne of grain, and barrel of LPG that moves through Prince Rupert’s terminals must travel by CN Rail along a single-track mountain corridor that has increasingly become a capacity constraint limiting the port’s growth ceiling. The new 1,600-foot two-track bridge and associated track extensions — representing several kilometres of new rail infrastructure — are explicitly designed to relieve that constraint and ensure that Prince Rupert’s C$3 billion-plus terminal investment programme does not create land-side bottlenecks that undercut its sea-side ambitions. When completed in 2027, this project will effectively remove the most significant choke point in the Prince Rupert supply chain, enabling the full range of new terminal capacity coming online through 2026 and 2027 to operate at the throughput rates the port’s commercial commitments require.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

Email ID:

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Email

Email *

SUBSCRIBE